He had never, so far as he knew, had a shirt upon his body; and his sole other garment was a jacket, so much too large for him, that to retain the use of his hands he had folded back the sleeves quite to his elbows.

Thus reversed they became pockets, the only ones he had, and in them he stowed whatever provisions were given him of which he could not make immediate use--porridge and sowens and mashed potatoes included: they served him, in fact, like the first of the stomachs of those animals which have more than one--concerning which animals, by the way, I should much like to know what they were in "Pythagoras' time." His head had plentiful protection in his own natural crop--had never either had or required any other.

That would have been of the gold order, had not a great part of its colour been sunburnt, rained, and frozen out of it.

All ways it pointed, as if surcharged with electric fluid, crowning him with a wildness which was in amusing contrast with the placidity of his countenance.
Perhaps the resulting queerness in the expression of the little vagrant, a look as if he had been hunted till his body and soul were nearly ruffled asunder, and had already parted company in aim and interest, might have been the first thing to strike a careless observer.

But if the heart was not a careless one, the eye would look again and discover a stronger stillness than mere placidity--a sort of live peace abiding in that weather-beaten little face under its wild crown of human herbage.